Fireplace repair in Lakeside by local experts

Firebrick is a different brick

Firebrick is made from fire clay to stand up to heat and to repeated heating and cooling, and the code names ASTM C27 or C1261 for it. It is paler, denser and more uniform than the face brick on the outside of a chimney. A firebox that was built or repaired with common brick shows it, with faces that crack, pop or flake near the fire. Replacing a single damaged firebrick means cutting out the old one without disturbing its neighbors, buttering the new one with refractory mortar and setting it flush so the fire does not catch a raised edge.

When the maker no longer supports the model

Makers of factory-built fireplaces change their lines, and parts for an older model can become hard or impossible to get. A part from another model, or a generic panel cut to fit, is not part of the listing the unit was tested under, so it is not a repair we make. The honest options are narrower: remaining stock through the maker's own parts network, a repair limited to what is still available, or replacing the unit. We explain which of these is open for your model and what each one involves, including whether the existing chimney pipe could serve a replacement.

A lintel that is pushing the brick

The masonry above a fireplace opening sits on a lintel, which the code requires to be noncombustible, with at least 4 inches of bearing at each end. Where that lintel is a steel angle, rust is its weakness. Steel grows as it rusts, and a rusting angle can lift or crack the brick it carries, which shows as a horizontal crack just above the opening or a course of brick that has bowed. Surface rust that has not moved the brick is cleaned and protected.

An angle that has lost metal or already cracked the face needs the brick above it taken down, a new angle set with full bearing at each end, and the brick relaid. We tell you which, with what we measured.